Shinpai Deshou has been quiet for some time, and a post about it is long overdue. What can I do with a B.A. in Japanese Studies? began in 2010, which is almost hard to believe, considering it was nearly a full 14 years ago. I began this blog during my Master’s degree, though I conceptualized it as early as the final years of my BA (go figure). The digital and career landscapes of 2008 to 2010 were very different than the one we find ourselves in now. Back then, almost a decade and a half ago (!), there were extremely few online resources out there to help folks who hoped to work in some capacity connected to Japan. Helping people locate helpful websites or tools or books or even specialists who have walked the path they were on was my goal, and as my career has continued, that desire to help people hasn’t changed. That said, the current digital environment is indeed a very different beast, and new generations of Japan specialists are blessed with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to guides, platforms, and other materials that can help them envision a multitude of career paths.

As a result, this blog has been quietly sunset, not only because there are many other things out there, but also because my own career has continued to evolve, and my energies have been put into other, adjacent resources related to Japan Studies. For example, I now maintain a Digital Resources and Projects on East Asia database, helping folks in and beyond East Asian Studies find research- and teaching-ready online materials. Every week all year round I collect, analyze, and visualize job data for the East Asian Studies field around the globe. 

Most significant to this blog, perhaps, is that I have spent the last 2-3 years collaborating with colleagues on the creation and launch of Japan Past & Present (JPP), a global information hub and repository that promotes research and teaching in the Japanese humanities across disciplinary, temporal, and geographic borders. JPP very much feels like an extension and expansion of much of the work I always hoped to do with Shinpai Deshou, though more focused on academia.

JPP in fact draws on many of the resources I originally created for Shinpai Deshou, and having support from the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, I have been able to achieve some of the pipe dreams I had as the creator of Shinpai Deshou, like finally taking my 14 years of information collected on funding opportunities for the blog and reenvisioning them with colleagues to create a filterable database of grants that Japan specialists can use to find the support they need, or converting those weekly publication announcements to a community-driven page featuring the latest publications on Japan from around the world.

What can I do with a B.A. in Japanese Studies? has been near and dear to my heart for so many years, and I cannot express the depth of gratitude I feel towards those who contributed their many articles and resources to help cultivate the blog into something that has given back to the Japan community. It has warmed my heart to have had so much encouragement from readers, and to hear from so many people who felt our articles helped them locate jobs, interview for a dream position, choose a school, and much more. Shinpai Deshou will no longer be updated, but I will work to keep the site available for those who still find it useful, outdated though it may become.

In the meanwhile, I hope you’ll explore its next generation, Japan Past & Present, by signing up for our newsletter and following us across social media on Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky. Though JPP is focused on an academic audience, its content will be of interest to anyone interested in Japan, and its future holds great possibilities for specialists of all kinds as a global information hub for the Japan field.

Thank you all for taking this journey with me and for your support over the years!

Paula Curtis